● 03.19.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 19/03/2023: Release of Libreboot 20230319 and NATO Expanding

Posted in News Roundup at 9:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: March 19th, 2023

• This week was a bit slow in Linux news and release, but we still got a new Firefox update, new digiKam and KDE Plasma updates, a new Transmission 4.0 bugfix release, as well as a new Kali Linux release celebrating the project’s 10th anniversary with lots of goodies.

• On top of that, I show you the major changes in the GNOME 44 desktop environment on Fedora Linux 38 and inform gamers about the latest Steam Deck software update. Check out the hottest news of this week and access all the distro and package downloads in 9to5Linux’s Linux weekly roundup for March 19th, 2023, below.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Linux Has Become Complicated And Limiting (GNOME, Wayland, etc)

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Steam Deck hits retail TODAY – what this means for the gaming world: Steam Deck News № 76

=> ↺ 2023-03-17How to install Audacity on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-17KaOS 2023.02 Quick Overview #shorts

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Linux Crash Course – Learn The “man” Command!

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Regata OS 22.1.3 overview | Ready for those who love to play

=> ↺ 2023-03-15How to Manage OpenStack Private Clouds Episode 6 – Automating Cloud Deployments

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Playing Bastion on Steam Deck w/ you fine folks!

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Playing Games on Steam Deck w/ you fine folks!

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Every Config Should Be A Literate Config! – DT LIVE

=> ↺ 2023-03-15NEVER Write Git Commit Messages With ChatGPT

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Why GNOME? Why Didn’t KDE Takeover Linux?!?

=> ↺ 2023-03-15How to install blendOS 2023.01.26

=> ↺ 2023-03-15Add Dialogs And Menus To Shell Scripts With Whiptail

=> ↺ 2023-03-17How to install Regata OS 22.1.3

=> ↺ 2023-03-15No, Flathub IS NOT turning EVIL and corporate

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Discord Tried To END This Reverse Engineered Server

=> ↺ 2023-03-15Enterprise Linux Security Episode 59 – AlmaLinux OS

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Docker vs Open Source, Ubuntu fights Python issues, Fedora 38 beta: Linux & Open Source News

=> ↺ 2023-03-16The Linux Link Tech Show Episode 996

• joel says mount that sucker on demand.

Applications

=> ↺ Libreboot 20230319 released!

• Libreboot provides boot firmware for supported x86/ARM machines, starting a bootloader that then loads your operating system. It replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware on x86 machines, and provides an improved configuration on ARM-based chromebooks supported (U-Boot bootloader, instead of Google’s depthcharge bootloader). On x86 machines, the GRUB and SeaBIOS coreboot payloads are officially supported, provided in varying configurations per machine. You can find the list of supported hardware in the Libreboot documentation.

• The last Libreboot release, version 20221214, was released on 14 December in 2022. This new release, Libreboot 20230319, is released today on March 19th, 2023.

• This is marked as a testing release. Not all ROM image configurations have been provided pre-compiled; specifically, daisy and veyron chromebook boards are not available pre-compiled, but the other boards are. A few new boards have been added, in addition to several fixes and feature additions.

=> ↺ NordVPN’s Latest Move: Open Sourcing Linux Client Code

• First, let’s clarify which parts of NordVPN are now open source. We are talking about…

• Relying on the advantages that open source brings, such as increased collaboration, greater flexibility, faster innovation, increased security, and better transparency, NordVPN welcomes developers with the required expertise and skills to contribute to and make changes to the existing codebase, thus contributing to the future improvement of this VPN solution.

• So, last week can be called a good one for Open Source movement, as just a few days ago, DreamWorks released its MoonRay animation software as open-source, and now NordVPN is following suit.

2023-03-16vtm Is A Text-Based Desktop Environment That Runs Inside A Terminal

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ There are two facets to dd usage

• The first facet is dd as a way to copy data around. If you view dd this way, it’s fine if some combination of dd, your C library, and the kernel optimize how this data copying is done. For example, if dd is reading or writing a file to or from a network socket, in many cases it would be desirable to directly connect the file and the network socket inside the kernel so that you don’t have to flow data through user level. If you’re using dd to copy data, you generally don’t care exactly how it happens, you just want the result.

=> ↺ Navigating the Complexities of BGP: Enhancing Security, Visibility, and Operability

• Since misconfigurations are one of the leading causes of BGP incidents, the goal of this article is to gather together information on best practices and dive into advanced techniques that can help network operators mitigate risks and optimise BGP performance.

• My aim is to walk anyone reading this through all of the most important capabilities of BGP and to provide recommendations and best practices for configuring BGP networks. Taking into account the capabilities listed here can help enterprises minimise the risks associated with BGP misconfigurations and ensure that their networks are operating safely and efficiently.

=> ↺ Everything You Need to Know About UFW Logs

• UFW firewall comes pre-installed in Ubuntu and as the name suggests UFW logs can offer inside-out information on how your firewall deals with incoming and outgoing requests.

=> ↺ 2023-03-13How to install the PokeMMO with Java 17 on a Chromebook

=> ↺ 2023-03-17How to install Audacity on Linux Lite 6.2

=> ↺ 2023-03-18How to install Gacha Cute on a Chromebook

=> ↺ 2023-03-17How to install VLC Media Player on a Chromebook

WINE or Emulation

=> ↺ Wine 8.4 rolls out with initial Wayland graphics driver work

• The Wine 8.4 development release is out now for this Windows translation layer, part of what makes Steam Play Proton tick. Every two weeks (ish), they put out a new release with the latest code like this. Once a year they then produce a stable version. We’re currently waiting to see when Valve upgrade Proton to the 8 series, no word on it yet.

Games

=> ↺ Stellaris: First Contact Story Pack and the free 3.7 update are out now

• Paradox have released the latest DLC for Stellaris with the First Contact Story Pack, along with a free update for all players. Since this is a Story Pack, it’s not a full expansion. The idea really is to give dedicated players just that little bit more, good for role-playing and for building up those stories sci-fi fans love so much. This is the kind of thing I’ve been personally wanting.

=> ↺ Game Jam Winner Spotlight: To And Again

• So far in our series of posts on showcasing the winners in all six categories of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927, we’ve featured Best Remix winner Lucia and Best Visuals winner Urbanity. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the winner of the Best Adaptation category: To And Again by Perrin Ellis.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ Arch Linux-Based SystemRescue 10 Released with Linux Kernel 6.1 LTS

• SystemRescue 10 is here three months after the previous release, SystemRescue 9.06, which was the last in the 9.x series. This new series comes with a long-term supported kernel, namely Linux 6.1 LTS, which supports new devices and features.

• Several new packages have been added in this release, including the QtPass a graphical frontend for pass that offers a simple password manager supporting GnuPG encryption, casync content-addressable data synchronizer, stressapptest and stress-ng for stress testing a computer system, as well as the Tk GUI toolkit.

BSD

=> ↺ OpenBSD on the Dell XPS 13 9380

• As usual, Secure Boot must be disabled in order to boot OpenBSD.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Dell XPS 15 9570 is missing BIOS updates

• My Dell XPS 15 9570 laptop is currently running the Fedora Linux distribution and receives firmware updates automatically from the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS). So far so good, but I recently became aware that the same firmware version is not provided on Dell’s drivers and downloads page.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ It’s A 486 Computer, On A Breadboard

• Ever since the 1970s, a frequent project has been to take a microprocessor and construct a computer system on a breadboard or stripboard. Usually these machines feature a familiar 8-bit processor such as a 6502 or a Z80 because of their breadboard-friendly DIP packages, but there is surprisingly little reason why some of the more recent silicon can’t be treated in the same way. [FoxTech] is leading the way on this, by making a breadboard computer using an 80486DX.

=> ↺ Tiny PCB PiezoPiano Plays Just One Octave

• Grand pianos are beautiful instruments, but take up altogether too much space. Upright pianos are smaller, but still fairly hefty. When it comes to the PiezoPiano, though, we suspect nobody could complain about its diminutive size. It’s a tiny thing with just one buzzy little octave for your playing pleasure.

=> ↺ STM32U5 Discovery Kit features 2.47” TFT round LCD

• The STM32U5A9J-DK is a development platform featuring an low power Arm Cortex M33 with support for Arm TrustZone. This compact dev kit is equipped with 4GB of eMMC memory, MEMs sensors and on-board debugger/programmer.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ 3D-Printed Shredder Eats Lettuce For Brekkast

• Shredding things isn’t just good for efficiently and securely disposing of them. It’s also very fun, as well. [Joonas] of [Let’s Print] didn’t have a shredder, so set about 3D printing one of their very own.

=> ↺ How to Overclock and Underclock a Raspberry Pi Pico

• You might be thinking “Why overclock a Raspberry Pi Pico?” Using a low level language, such as C, the Pico is capable of being used to play games such as Doom (the full game) using an HDMI output board. It can emulate retro computers such as the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. With MicroPython, overclocking will give us a noticeable speed boost, and underclocking may provide us with longer battery life if we’re using it in a battery-powered project.

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Super LoRaSerial

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ How To Get More Use Out Of Your Android Widgets

=> ↺ Common Gmail On Android Problems And How To Fix Them

=> ↺ How to Use the RPG Notes App for Android to Improve Your Tabletop RPGs

=> ↺ How to Change the Default Search Engine in the Most Popular Android Browsers

=> ↺ Oukitel WP19 rugged phone review: A battery beast | Android Central

=> ↺ What will make the Pixel 8 great, as told by the Android Police podcast

=> ↺ How to increase the battery life on your Android Smartphone?

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

=> ↺ 2023-03-16The Schedule for Citus Con: An Event for Postgres 2023 is out!

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Go slow to move fast

• There’s isn’t a universal answer to the best way to balance development velocity against technical debt. Thinking of debt as something taken on intentionally by a team to increase their short-term velocity at the expense of future work is an easy to apply strategy that has many benefits to engineering teams while also simplifying the concept for less technical individuals. By measuring accrued debt against long-term baselines and ceilings, engineering managers can get a feel for how much this debt is impacting their teams, and this data can be used to aid in prioritization decisions and high-level discussions with stakeholders.

• If your goal to to increase your teams’ overall development velocity in the long term, remember that you may want to slow down so that you can move fast.

=> ↺ lld 16 ELF changes

• Link speed has greatly improved compared to lld 15.0.0.

Python

=> ↺ Python and SLSA

• Supply chain Layers for Software Artifacts (SLSA) is a framework of tools to generate and verify provenance for software artifacts. In the Python ecosystem there are two main types of software artifacts: wheels and source distributions.

• How can we use the SLSA framework to generate and verify the provenance of Python artifacts?

Leftovers

=> ↺ “There was no comic book community in Zimbabwe, so we made Comexposed” – Eugene Mapondera

• In the most recent episode of Story Untold ZW, I sat with Eugene Ramirez Mapondera – the creative director at Kay Media Africa and Co-founder of Comexposed, a creative hub for digital artists in Zimbabwe.

• Mapondera is an accomplished animator and illustrator, having worked in film, advertising, and publishing for over 14 years. He has been the go-to storyboard artist for over 20 indie films & music videos from Australia, the USA, Canada and the UK including The Secret Princess (the UK, 2016) and Boston (the USA, 2014). Eugene is an active content creator and commentator on African pop culture and technology. He was a jury member at the 2022 Durban International Film Festival.

Science

=> ↺ The Beer Can

• This post is a celebration of one of my favorite bits of South Pole infrastructure.

• The Beer Can, or “vertical tower” in official USAP parlance, is how we move between our comfortable living zone above, and our critical infrastructure zone below.

Education

=> ↺ New College of Florida Is DeSantis’s Launchpad for Attack on Higher Education

=> ↺ ‘Beautiful’: Minnesota Becomes 4th State to Provide Free School Meals to All Kids

• Surrounded by students, teachers, and advocates, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Friday afternoon signed into law a bill to provide breakfast and lunch at no cost to all of the state’s roughly 820,000 K-12 pupils regardless of their household income.

Hardware

=> ↺ Building A Truss-Braced Model Airplane: Sense Or Nonsense?

• Following NASA’s recent results with truss-braced wing airplanes and the benefits this could bring to full-sized airplanes, [Think Flight] figured that if it helps with those airplanes, perhaps it may also be a boon for model airplanes. With the recent construction of a carrier airplane for smaller drones, he decided to give the concept a whirl to see whether it would make a difference compared to a regular wing design. This carrier airplane features a payload bay that can be opened in flight to release the drones stored inside it, making any potential increased payload capacity and improvements to the flight characteristics very welcome.

=> ↺ Calibrating Thermal Cameras With Hot Patterned Objects

• Thermal cameras are great if you want to get an idea of what’s hot and what’s not. If you want to use a thermal camera for certain machine vision tasks, though, you generally need to do a geometric calibration to understand what the camera is seeing and correct for lens distortion. [Henry Zhang] has shared various methods of doing just that.

=> ↺ Customizing The Start-Up Chime On A 1999 G3 IMac

• The start-up chime on Macs is probably as recognizable as the default Nokia ringtone in this day and age. Yet much like a ringtone, so too one might want to change the start-up chime on a Mac. This is something which [Doug Brown] has done in the past already on a Power Mac G3 in 2012, which made him instantly an expert on the topic in the eyes of a reader who wanted to know how to change the chime on a 1999 iMac. While the firmware on both these systems is written in Forth, it did take a bit of sleuthing to figure out where the chime was hiding in the firmware image, and how to change it.

=> ↺ Annoying Cicada Magnet Is Nonetheless Authentic

• We’ve all heard of those chirper devices that randomly make annoying noises for no other reason than sending people insane. This project from [Kousuke Saito] brings altogether more art to this idea, while still being quite annoying indeed.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ One in seven teens use too much social media

• One in seven Greek teenagers (13%) spend so much time on social media it has a negative impact on their state of mind, according to preliminary data gathered by the Research University Institute of Mental Health (EPIPSY) as part of a nationwide survey into behaviors related to the health of adolescent students.

• The as-yet unpublished data for 2022 show that addiction to social media was significantly higher among girls (16%), compared to boys (9%) and among 13-year-olds (16%) and 15-year-olds (16%), compared to 11-year-olds (6%).

=> ↺ The pioneering Lithuanian doctor who told people to wash

• Barbora Burbaitė-Eidukevičienė was the first Lithuanian woman to become a doctor in the 19th century. She was also the first to educate society about dirt.

=> ↺ Cutting Medicare Benefits Will Further Strain Overworked Caregivers

• There’s an ongoing debate in Washington about the need to trim government spending. As our representatives in Congress wrangle over words like “cuts” and “reforms,” the salient issue remains that long-standing entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are on the chopping block. It’s time that we acknowledge just how essential these programs are to supporting home and medical care for older Americans and the caregivers who provide that care.

Proprietary

=> ↺ US Government Warns Organizations of LockBit 3.0 Ransomware Attacks

• Since January 2020, LockBit has functioned based on the ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model, targeting a broad range of businesses and critical infrastructure entities and using a variety of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

• Also referred to as LockBit Black, LockBit 3.0 has a more modular architecture compared to its previous variants, and supports various arguments that modify its behavior after deployment.

=> ↺ Exploiting aCropalypse: Recovering Truncated PNGs

• The bug lies in closed-source Google-proprietary code so it’s a bit hard to inspect, but after some patch-diffing I concluded that the root cause was due to this horrible bit of API “design”: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/180526528.

• Google was passing “w” to a call to parseMode(), when they should’ve been passing “wt” (the t stands for truncation). This is an easy mistake, since similar APIs (like POSIX fopen) will truncate by default when you simply pass “w”. Not only that, but previous Android releases had parseMode(“w”) truncate by default too! This change wasn’t even documented until some time after the aforementioned bug report was made.

• The end result is that the image file is opened without the O_TRUNC flag, so that when the cropped image is written, the original image is not truncated. If the new image file is smaller, the end of the original is left behind.

• IMHO, the takeaway here is that API footguns should be treated as security vulnerabilities.

=> ↺ Rural hospitals need help from feds to fight ransomware, witnesses tell lawmakers

• Ransomware attacks against U.S. hospitals and health care organizations are becoming increasingly common with headlines occurring seemingly every day and stories about hackers selling health records on the dark web. In 2022, at least 25 ransomware attacks against healthcare providers impacted up to 290 hospitals, according to cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.

=> ↺ Patient’s ’embarrassing’ private health information posted to Facebook after breach

• There’s a lot to consider about this case. From the reporting, it appears that someone uploaded the files and allegedly created a Facebook page impersonating the patient with the intention of harming the patient and causing her emotional distress. When the patient discovered the page in February 2022 and tried to get it removed, it reportedly took Facebook one month to comply.

YouTube

=> ↺ 2023-03-15Memestock Traders Flocked to ‘Gangnam Style’ YouTube Comments While Reddit Was Down

=> ↺ 2023-03-17YouTube Is Bringing Trump Back Online

=> ↺ 2023-03-16YouTube TV’s Price Is Increasing to $73 a Month, and It Makes Me Want to Cancel My Subscription

=> ↺ 2023-03-16ISG: Lets you use YouTube as Cloud Storage for ANY files, not just Video

=> ↺ 2023-03-17YouTube Lifts Restrictions on Donald Trump’s Channel After 2-Year Suspension – CNET

=> ↺ 2023-03-15YouTube star fired from lawmaker job after failing to turn up for single day of work

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Donald Trump’s YouTube suspension is over

=> ↺ 2023-03-16YouTube TV raises prices to an outrageous $73 per month

=> ↺ 2023-03-15A YouTuber in Japan Turned His Parliament Post Into a Side Hustle

=> ↺ 2023-03-17YouTube Restores Donald Trump’s Account Privileges

Security

=> ↺ 2023-03-13 CISA Announces Ransomware Vulnerability Warning Pilot

=> ↺ 2023-03-14 Adobe Releases Security Updates for Multiple Products

=> ↺ 2023-03-14 CISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

=> ↺ 2023-03-14CISA Releases Four Industrial Control Systems Advisories

=> ↺ 2023-03-14 Microsoft Releases March 2023 Security Updates

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ House-hunter tweets how landlord in Bengaluru asked for his LinkedIn profile

• There is no debate that finding a house for rent, especially in the metro cities of India, comes with a lot of hurdles. Landlords ask for different things before they decide to rent their houses. However, what Twitter user Goutham couldn’t have imagined is one such homeowner in Bengaluru asking for his LinkedIn profile. He shared about his experience and his relatable post has created a buzz among tweeple.

=> ↺ Patient’s ’embarrassing’ private health information posted to Facebook after breach

• In February 2022, S.B. learned that a Facebook page impersonating her had been created. The page posted copies of S.B.’s private medical records — including evidence of STDs and other “embarrassing” details — on the public page.

=> ↺ Microsoft will add AI tech to office suite programs like Word, Excel

• The technology company previewed a new AI “copilot” for Microsoft 365, its product suite that includes Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and Outlook emails.

=> ↺ You’ve been pwned, how much will each stolen customer SSN cost you? How about $7.5k?

• Also under the settlement the physicians group doesn’t admit any culpability following the data heist.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ ‘Just call me Masha’: The International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrest of Putin and one of his appointees, Maria Lvova-Belova. She’s clearly no ordinary mom of 22. — Meduza

=> ↺ The Beginning Of The Iraq War: March 19, 2003

=> ↺ People’s Friendship University of Russia fires rector for student affairs following an exhibition that displayed the Ukrainian flag — Meduza

• The People’s Friendship University of Russia has replaced its vice rector for student affairs, after an exhibition at the university featured a Ukrainian flag.

=> ↺ Putin signs order banning ‘discrediting’ and ‘fakes’ about volunteers and mercenaries — Meduza

• President of Russia Vladimir Putin has signed laws making it illegal to “discredit” or share “fakes” about volunteers and mercenaries fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

=> ↺ ‘Threat to the Nation’: Trump Calls for Protests to Stop Potential Arrest in Echo of Jan. 6

• Former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed Saturday on his social media platform that he “will be arrested” on Tuesday and implored his supporters to “protest” and “take our nation back,” sparking fears of additional right-wing violence.

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Swedish foreign minister disappointed by Turkey not acting on Nato bid

=> ↺ Putin travels to Crimea for the first time in three years, for the anniversary of its annexation by Russia — Meduza

• President of Russia Vladimir Putin traveled to Sevastopol, in Crimea, for the ninth anniversary of the peninsula’s annexation by Russia.

=> ↺ ‘He survived war but not rehabilitation’ An employee at a rehab center describes caring for Russian soldiers returning from the front — Meduza

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ So you want to be a climate-conscious investor. Here’s how to avoid greenwashing

• During a recent rally outside the University of Toronto, Saarthak Singh and Achint Singh joined the crowd urging the government to take action against climate change. But it’s not the only way they advocate for a greener future. Both students also plan to make financial investments that will benefit the environment.

=> ↺ 2023-03-15U.S. states, Epic Games, others accuse Google CEO Sundar Pichai of ‘routinely opt[ing] to move … to history-off [c]hats to hold sensitive conversations’ in violation of retention obligations

Environment

=> ↺ Climate Policy’s on Shaky Ground in the Farm Bill

• Members of Congress have begun drafting the 2023 “Farm Bill,” and they’ll be wrangling over it through most of the year. This legislation, passed into law anew every fifth year or so since the 1930s, has had far-reaching influence on food and farming in the United States. Each version of the bill is given its own name; the previous one, for example, was called the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. Given the nature of the early debate over this bill-in-the-making, it might end up deserving to be called the Food and Climate Bill of 2023.

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Willow Weep for Me

• NClick the image to tell President Biden: We need BOLD climate solutions, not more oil projects! (Steve Brodner)

Wildlife/Nature

=> ↺ We Need a National Strategy on Whale Ship Strikes

• Whales are the biggest creatures on earth, but they are no match for a supertanker. In recent months there has been a rash of whales washed up on U.S. shores, with broken backs or other mortal injury.

Finance

=> ↺ Russian residents’ cash holdings exceed $100 billion for the first time — Meduza

• Data published by Russia’s Central Bank show that, as of February 1, residents of the country have cash holdings equivalent to 105.4 billion USD.

=> ↺ Tribal Nations Seek Regional Food Trade Hubs as SNAP Benefits Expire

=> ↺ The SVB and Signature Bank Crashes Show Why We Need Public Banking

=> ↺ The World Needs Just Green Trade, Not ‘Free Trade’

• The global economy hit a new milestone in 2022 by surpassing $100 trillion. This expansion, which has experienced only the occasional setback such as the 2020 Covid shutdowns, has been accelerated by trade. The world trade volume experienced 4,300% growth from 1950 to 2021, an average 4% increase every year. This linked growth of the global economy and international trade took off in the 1980s as governments embraced the project of globalization, which prioritized the reduction of barriers to trade such as tariffs.

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Global markets react to Credit Suisse deal as fears hit bank stocks

=> ↺ 2023-03-17JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and more give $30B lifeline to First Republic

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Global markets react to Credit Suisse deal as fears hit bank stocks

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Credit Suisse meets under pressure to merge with UBS

=> ↺ 2023-03-18UBS seeks $9b in govt guarantees for Credit Suisse deal

=> ↺ 2023-03-15Bank fears spread to Europe as Credit Suisse, other big lenders see shares drop

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Credit Suisse shares rebound, with gains slipping, after $74B central bank loan

=> ↺ 2023-03-18The fate of Credit Suisse could be decided in the next 24 hours

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Credit Suisse’s $50 billion lifeline calms bank panic

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Cautious optimism as Credit Suisse steps back from the brink

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Credit Suisse to borrow $54 billion from Swiss central bank

=> ↺ 2023-03-18UBS holds talks to save Credit Suisse — report

=> ↺ 2023-03-15Your Thursday Briefing: Bank Fears Resurface

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Credit Suisse Announces Multibillion-dollar Loan From SNB

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Why Barney Frank Went to Work for Signature Bank

=> ↺ 2023-03-17JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and more give $30B lifeline to First Republic

=> ↺ 2023-03-17SVB’s Parent Company Declares Bankruptcy While Tech Investors Return to the Failed Bank

=> ↺ 2023-03-16SVB fall: This is the financial catastrophe, but it’s just getting started

=> ↺ 2023-03-175 things for Michigan to know amid SVB banking crisis

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Why some in Canada’s tech industry are feeling jittery after Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse

=> ↺ 2023-03-14The world struggles to predict financial fallout from California bank collapse

=> ↺ 2023-03-15See lawmaker’s viral breakdown of SVB collapse

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Has hypocrisy in Silicon Valley been exposed?

=> ↺ 2023-03-15HSBC’s acquisition of SVB UK a ‘big sigh of relief’ for tech startups

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Fed Blocked Mention of Regulatory Flaws in Silicon Valley Bank Rescue

=> ↺ 2023-03-18Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse Makes Everyone Look Terrible

=> ↺ 2023-03-16You Should Be Outraged About Silicon Valley Bank

=> ↺ 2023-03-17U.S. FDIC Weighs Backstop on Bank Auctions to Attract Smaller Peers – Source

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ In ‘isolated incident’, Wipro lays off 120 employees in Tampa, US: Reports

• Among those laid off, more than 100 people are processing agents, and the rest are team leaders and a team manager. The layoffs, which are permanent, will begin in May.

• Across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, Wipro has more than 20,500 employees.

=> ↺ 2023-03-14Greens set out fairer, Greener plan for economy ahead of Spring Budget

=> ↺ 2023-03-16WSJ: ‘U.S. Threatens Ban if TikTok’s Chinese Owners Don’t Sell Stakes’

=> ↺ EU Cyber Resilience Act part two: Updates & Impracticalities

• As a follow-up to my earlier post on the EU Cyber Resilience Act, here I’d like to address some practicalities: how would it actually work.

• Like with the previous article, I want to thank the many people that spent serious time explaining the CRA and its intentions to me, this is most appreciated.

=> ↺ A TikTok ban isn’t about privacy, it’s about politics

• I’m not a fan of TikTok and actually think the banning of it on government-owned or administered devices is a smart move. There is zero doubt that the app collects far more user data than necessary and has the capability of monitoring everything you type into your keyboard through its browser. I’m not a security researcher but I don’t need to be one because those that are — even the ones who enjoy TikTok — tell me it’s a privacy nightmare. Having it installed on a phone where your work email is government business is not a good thing.

• The big problem here is that there are a lot of other apps that are just as bad (maybe even worse) when it comes to consumer privacy violations. We know about the few times companies took it too far and got caught, as Facebook (now Meta) and Twitter were both caught doing things their own privacy policies said would never happen. So why ban TikTok and not Twitter?

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

=> ↺ LTV: Latvian Russian Union warned about future conduct

• According to the information available to LTV, the poitical party widely seen as the most pro-Kremlin force in Latvia is one step away from a court being able to terminate its activities.

• in March last year, the State Security Service (VDD) issued a first warning to the party over its dissemination of Kremlin propaganda messages via its social media accounts. But the situation did not change and according to LTV there are even new efforts to turn the population of Latvia against helping Ukraine.

=> ↺ 2023-03-15What YouTube hustle gurus are really selling you

Censorship/Free Speech

=> ↺ Russian Couple Handed Prison Terms For Expressing Anti-War Stance Online

• [...] The Konakovo City Court on March 17 sentenced Aleksandr Martynov and his wife, Lyudmila Razumova, to 6 1/2 and 7 years in prison, respectively, after finding them guilty of vandalism and discrediting Russia’s armed forces. [...]

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ bianet Kurdish editor Aren Yıldırım released after two days in detention

• Kept at the İstanbul Security Directorate for two days, Yıldırım was referred to the İstanbul Courthouse early in the morning. The prosecutor’s office ordered his release after taking his statement. No judicial control measures were imposed on Yıldırım.

=> ↺ Police detain journalist in Mersin

• It was learned that Bayram was detained in the scope of the investigation of the eleven correspondents of Mezopotamya Agency and JINNEWS.

Civil Rights/Policing

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Transportation workers unions initiate massive protests in Greece

=> ↺ Inside the Underground Network Fighting for Asylum Seekers in Scotland

=> ↺ French Protests Escalate Over Attempt to Force Retirement Age Hike

=> ↺ Uproar in Italy as Fascist Government Attacks Right of Same-Sex Parents to Adopt

• Hundreds of people hit the streets of Milan, Italy on Saturday to protest the far-right government’s assault on the parental rights of same-sex couples.

=> ↺ 2023-03-14Bahrain: 4 Arrested Over Tweets

=> ↺ 2023-03-14Burundi: Free Five Rights Defenders

=> ↺ 2023-03-14Cambodia: Labor Leader, Activists Face Baseless Charges

=> ↺ 2023-03-15More Migrant Deaths in the Mediterranean

=> ↺ 2023-03-15UAE: Arbitrarily Detained Afghans Stuck in Limbo

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Australia Commits to Protect Schools During Wartime

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Egypt: End Stranglehold on Nongovernmental Groups

=> ↺ 2023-03-16FIFA: Approve ‘Legacy Fund’ for 2022 World Cup Abuses

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Mozambique: Police Teargas Rapper’s Funeral Procession

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Thailand: Drop Charges Against Rights Defenders

=> ↺ 2023-03-16UN Expert Slams Greece Over Civil Society Curbs

=> ↺ 2023-03-16US Bill Seeks to ‘Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers’

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Burkina Faso Acts to Tackle Armed Forces Abuses

=> ↺ 2023-03-17FIFA Reverses Saudi Sponsorship of Women’s World Cup

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Forced from Home for Protesting Indonesia’s Mandatory Hijab Rules

=> ↺ 2023-03-17Saudi Arabia: Jordanian Executed After Unfair Trial

=> ↺ 2023-03-17In Tunisia Talks, EU Should Privilege Human Rights Over Politics

=> ↺ 2023-03-19Twenty Years on, Iraq Bears Scars of US-led Invasion

=> ↺ Her Employer Spent $1M Fighting Insurance Coverage for Her Gender-Affirming Care

• When a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia’s Houston County sought surgery as part of her gender transition, local officials refused to change the department’s health insurance plan to cover it, citing cost as the primary reason.

• In the years that followed, the central Georgia county paid a private law firm nearly $1.2 million to fight Sgt. Anna Lange in federal court — far more than it would have cost the county to offer such coverage to all of its 1,500 health plan members, according to expert analyses. One expert estimated that including transition-related care in the health plan would add about 0.1% to the cost of all claims, which would come to roughly $10,000 per year, on average.

=> ↺ Decarceration Advocates Call for Rikers to Be Transformed Into Green Energy Hub

=> ↺ Change is Coming to the United Auto Workers

• The machine will churn no more. Nearly 80 years of top-down one-party rule in the United Auto Workers are coming to an end. Reformer Shawn Fain is set to be the winner in the runoff for the UAW presidency.

=> ↺ I marched for my mother who wasn’t allowed to go to school

• “It is against our traditions and values to educate women. If she learns to write, she will start writing letters to other men, and that will violate the honour of your family,” said the cleric. He convinced the grandmother to stop sending the girl to school, and after that day, she was never allowed to step foot in school again.

Monopolies

Patents

=> ↺ 2023-03-19OPPO, others stand to benefit from Lenovo’s resounding UK FRAND victory over InterDigital: experts’ selectivity, excessive discounts, conduct-based arguments fail to persuade judge

=> ↺ 2023-03-16Inspiring inventors – Elena García Armada

Copyrights

=> ↺ BREIN Shut Down 449 Pirate Sites & Services in 2022

• Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been fighting pirates of all kinds for the last 25 years. BREIN’s latest annual report covering 2022 reveals that it completed 458 investigations and shut down 449 pirate sites. That’s 100 more than BREIN reported for 2021. Pirates are clearly persistent but BREIN is always up for the fight.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ More Epsom Salt Crystal Photos

• I left a crystal growing for a few weeks. Here are a few photos with the coin microscope. I used red lighting in some of the photos. There is no post-processing except re-encoding the images in GIMP.

=> ↺ 🔤SpellBinding: EUIKLRH Wordo: FULLS

=> ↺ I have a lot of things to do but

=> ↺ hey Midnight patrons, lookie here

• Sorry for self-spamming (I guess) but being a fan of the Smol Web, and passionate about the Ctrl-c community, as well as M.p, S.p, and also the Speakeasy (shhh), I put together a(nother) zine called Ctrl-ZINE. Our lovely Webmaster m15o is therein, too. As well as ~lettuce, ~phoebos, and ~nttp of Ctrl-c. Several others are preparing entries for submission in Issue.2

Politics

=> ↺ The absurdities of this election-denying age

• We have friends who often do cross-border shopping. Before Christmas, they asked us what sort of pillows we like; we said “soft”.

• At Christmas we opened the small gifts to each other and saw two MyPillows with election denier Mike Lindell’s face on them.

Technical

=> ↺ Mastodon vs. Finger

• I am too young to use Finger protocol when it was a common thing. I got to know about Finger years later, as one of the Linux/Unix commands, and put into my head a theoretical description of it. But that theoretical description of Finger protocol and command can obscure the whole idea behind it. So imagine a world where an average user has access to a shell account and has the ability to operate on the Internet from inside of the chosen server. So an average user can read and write files, the same as today’s average user. But that former average user had, almost forgotten today, ability to write and publish files for a wider audience. Because today most of us is thinking that publishing data is a big thing. So big that it need to use special tools for that. We can’t put the data into a regular file, instead of we put that data on special platforms.

=> ↺ Mastodon vs. Finger

=> ↺ Lacing, pizza, and IPsec failures

• Recently I have finally tried Ian’s shoelace knot tying method: it produces a regular bow knot, but a tiny bit faster, and it feels neat to tie it with fewer movements. I’m not sure if it is quite as secure as the regular method, since it is harder to keep it tensioned, but seems to be fine.

• Then I decided to go further and investigate lacing methods on Ian’s Shoelace Site (it is at fieggen.com). Found “Ukrainian lacing”, which “traps” the starting knot, so that you don’t have to tie it again. It has a drawback of the last pair of eyelets being left untensioned, but its fourth variation solves that. So I tried it (after briefly trying the third variation), and though it sort of works, so far (after more than a month) I find it slower to both tie and untie shoes with that kind of lacing: quick release is lost, so untying is a bit annoying, while for tying it is tricky to find the correct runs of the shoelace: you get a tangle of those, at least with certain kinds of shoes and shoelaces. Maybe I’ll try it again on summer shoes, but going to redo the lacing back to regular crisscross lacing. Oh, and tensioning seemed even harder to do well with Ukrainian lacing.

=> ↺ FYI: Use X509 v3 certificates for Gemini capsules to comply with RFC 8446

• I’ve been working on upgrading TLS code for TLGS. One of the improvments is that besides OpenSSL, Botan can also be used as the underlying TLS library. In the process I discovered one thing. According to RFC, a TLS 1.3 server must send X509 v3 certificates unless explicitly negotiated.

=> ↺ Using a VCR and Tablet

• I’ve been writing a lot about this new/old table I recently bought. So here’s me talking about it even more.

• I guess the reason I have so much to say about this little thing is because I never thought I’d be a tablet guy. I thought I was a phone and computer guy with a dedicated e-paper ereader for books only. Well, buying this tablet has made me rethink that idea of myself completely.

• I initially bought my tablet to use as a dedicated ereader. I would keep the WiFi off and only turn it on to sync books from my Libreture library. However, I then installed my RSS reader and Lagrange for some gemini reading, and so on and so on until I’m keeping the WiFi on all the time and doing all my computing away from my main computer on the damn thing.

=> ↺ Self-help for people running role-playing games

• Doing the Internet Office Hours podcast with @phf@tabletop.social, @frotz@mstdn.games and @wandererbill@tabletop.social feels like referee-self-help. It’s great talking to peers about games, the problems we have and the solutions we found.

=> ↺ The other SFTP that never was

• For reasons, I’m doing some research into the history of FTP (File Transport Protocol) when I come across an RFC (Request For Comments) for SFTP. Only this isn’t the SFTP (Secure File Transport Protocol) [1] that is used today, but instead the Simple File Transfer Protocol [2] from 1984. Unlike TFTP (Trivial File Transport Protocol), it uses TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), and unlike FTP, it only uses a single network connection.

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=> Techrights

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